Recently, I've been learning about dreams. In particular, I've watched several informational videos about "lucid dreaming" and how the dream realm is a visual manifestation of your subconscious terrain. Many dream enthusiasts are exploring their ability to remain conscious in their dreams, remember their dreams, and analyze their dreams to help learn what programs and creative powers are hiding in their subconscious mind.

They provide methods of beginning the learning process to conscious dreaming, and explain that, for beginners, it may take several different steps before becoming able to be in full command of your dream world. With this in mind, I've been trying some techniques to ease myself into the dream state each night, with varying results.

When there are a lot of distractions in my home, I find that I'm more likely to remain in a half-asleep state, where I'm conscious of noises in the house, but also seem to be more in tuned with my subconscious as well. In this state, I often receive visuals and ideas for artwork, business, and lifestyle projects.

When I'm able to get into a deeper sleep, however, I find that my dreams are engaging and interesting, but not usually convincingly vivid. What's funny is that many teachers say that being "lucid" in a dream starts with simply recognizing that you're in a dream, and using that knowledge to control what you experience in the dream. Generally speaking, though, I've always had dreams like that. I almost always know when I'm dreaming, but for some reason, it hasn't been easy for me to literally stop and announce to myself, "hey, I'm dreaming!" and act upon it with authority.

Usually, I just wind up going along with the course of the dream, with a subtle awareness that it isn't real life. If something scary happens, that's usually when I instinctively remind myself that it's only a dream, and either shift the outcome in a subtle way, or simply wake up. As far as remembering my dreams, I'd say I only remember them about half the time. I believe it has a lot to do with which part of the sleep cycle I'm in when I'm woken up.

Thankfully, I work from home now (YES!!! Finally!) and don't usually bother with an alarm clock anymore. However, living with a partner who sometimes snores and wakes up a lot during the night, and sharing my small apartment with three cats, more often than not, I do tend to get woken up unexpectedly. I'll be moving into a larger home very soon, and I'm convinced that my access to a solid night's sleep will be greatly improved.

One thing that seems to be pretty standard across the board for lucid dream teachers and enthusiasts is that you must keep a dream journal. Not just a blog on your device, but a notebook by your bedside, so that you can simply jot down the key points of a dream as soon as you wake up in the morning, or even in the middle of the night. You don't want to have to get out of bed and go to your computer desk, or force your eyes to adjust to looking at a lighted screen, because that will effect your ability to remember your dream, or fall naturally back asleep.

One vision that came to me on a night when I was "half asleep" was that I needed to start a dream journal as soon as possible, and that it would eventually be a great idea to share my dreaming journey and create a line of dream journals with illustrated covers! This will be the start of a series of upcoming blog posts on dreaming and dream journaling, in which I will share experiences and tips for learning your subconscious terrain!

What do you know about dreaming? Do you keep a dream journal? Please share you're thoughts in the comments! I'm very curious about this topic!